Many of the signature U.S. political movements of the
1960s — from Civil Rights to the Women's Movement to Free Speech
— were founded on justifiable anger at difficult, if not intolerable,
conditions. But over the past 40 years, the well-intentioned and honorable
impulses of that era have spawned results their originators would hardly
recognize. The justifiably angry left gradually became the cynically angry
left as the positions, values, and tactics employed to legitimate ends
in the '60s became ossified over the next several decades.

The Angry Left has been transformed from the very symbol
of freedom into its exact opposite: a political force that would impose
totalitarian control over its subjects in all important areas, from government
to education to medicine to communications. The politicization of anger
by the Left has turned this fundamental emotion into something infinitely
more complex than, for instance, road rage. To complicate matters further,
just when you think you're beginning to catch on to the anger thing, another
case of political anger pops up and confuses you even more.

Here are a few examples of acceptable and unacceptable
political anger, as defined by the Angry Left:
You can be angry that war is violent, but you can't be angry about the
glorification of violence that is one of the core values of the Hollywood
branch of the entertainment industry.

You can be angry that Jews kill Palestinians, but you
can't be angry that Palestinians kill Jews.

You can be angry that Trent Lott made a stupid and indefensible
statement in favor of the 1948 Dixiecrat candidacy of Strom Thurmond,
but you can't be angry that Robert Byrd, the former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle
who led the Democratic Party in the Senate for a dozen years through the
late 1980s, used the equally stupid and indefensible phrase "white
Nigger" on a Sunday morning news-talk show not long ago.

You can be angry that Americans drive SUVs, but you can't
be angry that anti-pollution laws setting mileage standards which dictate
that a significant percentage of American cars will be unsafe have been
responsible for the deaths of as many as 46,000 Americans since 1975.

You can be angry that House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde
oversaw then-President Clinton's impeachment for legal, moral, and ethical
"high crimes and misdemeanors," but you can't be angry that
actor Alec Baldwin said that Hyde should be "stoned to death"
and his family "killed" on the Late Night With Conan O'Brien
show in front of more than a million TV viewers.

You can be angry that a species of animal is endangered
when its habitat is disturbed by human activity, but you can't be angry
that families of human beings are deprived of their homes and livelihoods
in order to protect endangered species.

You can be angry that as many as a thousand civilians
may have died in the U.S.-led war to liberate Afghanistan and remove the
Taliban from power, but you can't be angry that the Taliban had murdered
tens of thousands of Afghanis during their reign of terror and would have
murdered thousands more if they had stayed in power for even a year longer
than they did.

You can be angry that there are people in the United States
who think that most, or even all, abortions should be banned, but you
can't be angry that in Communist China the selective killing of female
babies because male babies are highly desirable in that culture has led
to a staggering and demographically disastrous ratio of 117 male births
for every 100 female births.

You can be angry that the Miss America and Miss World
pageants exploit women by presenting them as sexual objects, but you can't
be angry that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera (to name only two)
exploit adolescent female sexuality to generate hundreds of millions of
dollars in revenues for themselves and the corporations they work for.

You can be angry that the Reverend Jerry Falwell exhorts
people to live lives that exemplify Christian virtues, but you can't be
angry that rap/hip-hop artists from Public Enemy to Eminem have espoused
misogyny and murder in their lyrics.
The Angry Left has transformed public debate from a forum for the legitimate
discussion of important issues into a war zone where you have to fear
for your well-being if you so much as try to give voice to a legitimate
and defensible position in opposition to theirs.

The tactic used by the Angry Left to further their totalitarian
aims which I'm referring to is, of course, political correctness. The
problem is that thinking and feeling Americans — despite the blinders
the Angry Left seeks to impose on all citizens through its education and
communications hegemonies — still have the intelligence and common
sense and decency to look around and say, Wait a minute! What kind of
fast one are you trying to pull? What sort of perverse notion of fairness
and decency are you trying to shove down our throats?

The Left is no longer speaking to what amounts to a captive
audience (except in most colleges and universities.) The rise of talk
radio and of the extraordinary exchange of information that takes place
on the internet are among the primary reasons the leftist agenda is beginning
to crumble. When people are allowed free choice of the programs they listen
to and the information they access, the Left loses. Left liberals cannot
compete in the marketplace of ideas. In the age of instant communications,
their ideas are challenged immediately, and they have no responses. At
least none that thinking Americans want to hear.

America is on to the Angry Left. The political correctness
Left/Liberals would impose on all of us if they gained further control
in this country twists, distorts, and perverts political and social issues
so that they become nothing more than attempts to leverage anger in support
of dangerous and intolerable political positions.

We know better, and we're not about to let a group who
misjudges and mistrusts the intelligence and common sense of the American
people lead us down the path to social, moral and political dissolution
in the name of a legitimate emotion which they have co-opted to shore
up a corrupt and dissolute agenda.